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Monday, April 8, 2013

Edmund Burke Versus John Locke

Edmund Burke Versus John Locke

Introduction

Most people know that Edmund Burke wrote in response to the French Revolution and is universally admired for his criticisms of Democratic
Republicanism. They often are not clued in to what he actually said. Rather most intellectual conservatives refer to him and code, and when they quote Burke they quote his earlier writings and speaches supporting the US Colonies revolt against the Crown.They rarely quote “Reflections on the Revolution directly” and I’ve come to realize why.

The intellectual founder of the Enlightenment in the English Speaking world is most certainly John Locke. His Treatises on Government define the vision for what Government should be. He invents the word “commonwealth” as a translation of the word “Republic” but with added sensibility from English History and experience in his choice of words.And John Locke defined the parameters of what a just commonwealth should look like.For that reason John Locke is often quoted by conservatives extensively, and selectively.[http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/commonwealth-according-to-locke.html]

The reason they don’t quote Burke is that Burke wasn’t arguing with his contemporaries such as Mary Wollstonecraft or Paine, but was arguing with his own mentor and intellectual father, John Locke. (what I consider a subversion and betrayal of Lockean principles)

But
Edmund Burke wasn’t really arguing with them. He was arguing with John Lock.

Edmund Burke, in this book, wasn’t
attacking the excesses of the Republicans in France, but the Federalist and
Republican notions of critics of the Crown.And he was attacking the principles of John Locke when he attacked the
Federalist notion that people have the rights:

Now, he couldn’t go at this directly, so he writes a long lawyerly, rhetorical exercise in sophistry to do it.He had to pay lip service to the Glorious revolution in order to attack and demolish Locke’s concepts.In order to accomplish his end he first attacks the notion that people have a right to choose their own governors. And he does by conflating the reality that when the Whigs who put in place the Hanover line, they paid lip service and accepted the long traditions of royalty in Britain. He notes that they tried to avoid even the appearance of an election:

“They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too much resemble an election,
and that an election would be utterly destructive of the "unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation", which they thought to be considerations
of some moment.”[2]

Arguing with Himself – Wollenstonecraft

It was a change in leadership.Call it an election or an appointment.And of course a radical course of action would have been hard on the peace of of the country. They had the example of the interregnum of Olivar Cromwell, when the King was replaced with a dictator “Lord Protector”. When they brought back the crown they didn’t want Governors who could rule absolutely. They didn’t want another “Lord Protector, so they left mostly ceremonial powers with the King, but trusted the “Governorship” to the Prime Minister. Who could be replaced.In so doing they were limiting the power of both King and Prime Minister. And employing the Republican principle of separation of powers. So Burkes argument is not only sophistry, it is transparent sophistry, and as Mary Wollenstonecraft writes:

“You were so
eager to taste the sweets of power, that you could not wait till time had
determined, whether a dreadful delirium would settle into a confirmed madness;
but, prying into the secrets of Omnipotence, you thundered out that God had hurled
him from his throne, and that it was the most insulting mockery to
recollect that he had been a king, or treat him with any particular respect on
account of his former dignity…. I have, Sir, been reading, with a scrutinizing,
comparative eye, several of your insensible and profane speeches during the
King's illness. I disdain to take advantage of a man's weak side, or draw
consequences from an unguarded transport—A lion preys not on carcasses![33] [emphasis Wollstonecraft's]”[3]

So Burke was revealing his hypocrisy in this book.No wonder modern Conservatives so love him. And his attack on theright to “choose
our own governors” borders on anti-semitism as well:

“To provide for these objects and, therefore, to exclude for ever the Old Jewry doctrine of "a
right to choose our own governors", they follow with a clause containing a most solemn pledge,taken from the preceding act of Queen Elizabeth, as solemn a pledge as ever was or can be given in favor of an hereditary succession, and as solemn a renunciation as could be made of the principles by this Society imputed to them:

And here he continues:

The Lords spiritual and
temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly
and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities for ever; and do
faithfully promise that they will stand to maintain, and defend their said
Majesties, and also the limitation of the crown, herein specified and contained,
to the utmost of their powers, etc. etc.[4]

And as Thom Paine would say

“I am contending for the rights of the living.”None of us should obligate our children to anything that amounts to
tyranny and bondage. But Burke doesn’t stop there. He goes on to attack the right
to cashier bad governors.Something that
again, Mary Wollenstonecraft would gleefully point out he had done with the temporary
removal of George III during his madness.

“THE second claim
of the Revolution Society is "a right of cashiering their governors for misconduct".
[5]

Trust versus “mere misconduct.”

His argument here lies on a false distinction between “mere
misconduct” and:

“No government could stand a moment if it could be
blown down with anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of
"misconduct". They who led the Revolution grounded the virtual
abdication of King James upon no such light and uncertain principle [as mere
misconduct]. They charged him with
nothing less than a design, confirmed by a multitude of illegal overt acts, to
subvert the protestant church and state, and their fundamental, unquestionable
laws and liberties; they charged him with having broken the original contract
between king and people.”[6]

And here is where Burke is arguing with John Locke, who noted
that the misconduct of a ruler; is founded on the breaking the trust of the
people, which Locke shows conclusively is directly related to the trust of God
himself; according to the bible. Perhaps that is the reason for the anti-semitic
smear at the beginning of the passage.“Mere
misconduct” is a symptom of Tyranny which locke defines as:

“199. As usurpation is the exercise of power which another
hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody
can have a right to; and this is making use of the power any one has in his hands,
not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate
advantage. When the governor, however entitled, makes not the law, but his
will, the rule, and his commands and actions are not directed to the
preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own
ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.”[7]

Yes, the violation of Trust is
more than mere misconduct. Burke is right in the following passage, but not for
the reasons his sophistry and rhetoric drive towards.

“This was more than misconduct. A grave and overruling
necessity obliged them to take the step they took, and took with infinite reluctance,
as under that most rigorous of all laws. Their trust for the future preservation
of the constitution was not in future revolutions. The grand policy of all
their regulations was to render it almost impracticable for any future
sovereign to compel the states of the kingdom to have again recourse to those
violent remedies.”[8]

It was more than misconduct because it was a violation of
his trust for the sake of personal “private, separate advantage”.

And the early Whigs did it by forcing the crown to recognize
that it’s power was by the trust of the people. The crown was allowed to claim
that trust came from God, only because John Locke had established that the
trust of God (of heaven to use Eastern Terminology) and the trust of the people
are one and the same. Locke argued powerfully that the basis of rule for kings
was neither Primogenitre or mere inheritance:

§95.
If God, by his positive grant and revealed declaration, first gave rule and
dominion to any man, he that will claim by that title, must have the same
positive grant of God for his succession: for if that has not directed the
course of its descent and conveyance clown to others, nobody can succeed to
this title of the first ruler. Children have no right of inheritance to this,
and primogeniture can lay no claim to it, unless God, the Author of this
constitution, hath so ordained it. Thus we see the pretensions of Saul’s
family, who received his crown from the immediate appointment of God, ended
with his reign; and David, by the same title that Saul reigned, viz., God’s
appointment, succeeded in his throne, to the exclusion of Jonathan, and all
pretensions of paternal inheritance: and if Solomon had a right to succeed his
father, it must be by some other title than that of primogeniture.[9]

Locke shows that the legitimacy of rulers depends on their
ability to fulfil the duties entrusted to them. Not any divine right. As Locke
notes:

“the Lord had anointed him to be captain over his
inheritance” (ch. 10. 1). And therefore those who, after Saul being solemnly
chosen and saluted king by the tribes at Mispah, were unwilling to have him
their king, make no other objection but this, “How shall this man save us?”
(ch. 10. 27), as if they should have said: “This man is unfit to be our king,
not having skill and conduct enough in war to be able to defend us.” And when
God resolved to transfer the government to David, it is in these words: “But
now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought Him a man after His
own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over His people” (ch.
13. 14.).[10]

In this way Locke demonstrates that kings (and Governors in
general) lose their right to rule when they engage in tyranny and mischief, and
that the power any executive has is a trust. So ultimately Burke was arguing
with Locke:

149 “For all power given with
trust for the attaining an end being limited by that end, whenever that end is
manifestly neglected or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and
the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew
where they shall think best for their safety and security. And thus the
community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the
attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators, whenever they shall
be so foolish or so wicked as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties
and properties of the subject. For no man or society of men having a power to
deliver up their preservation, or consequently the means of it, to the absolute
will and arbitrary dominion of another, whenever any one shall go about to
bring them into such a slavish condition, they will always have a right to
preserve what they have not a power to part with, and to rid themselves of
those who invade this fundamental, sacred, and unalterable law of
self-preservation for which they entered into society. And thus the community may
be said in this respect to be always the supreme power, but not as considered
under any form of government, because this power of the people can never take
place till the government be dissolved.”

And of course people have the right to frame their own governments.But Burke writes:

“THE third head of right,asserted by the pulpit of the Old Jewry, namely, the "right to form a government for
ourselves", has, at least, as little countenance from anything done at the
Revolution, either in precedent or principle, as the two first of their claims.
The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient,indisputable laws and liberties
and that ancient constitution of governmentwhich is our only security for law
and liberty.[11]”

But of course the
revolution that occurred when the Parliament brought back William and Mary was
a change of Government. The first two Georges could barely speak English, and Parliament
ruled.Burkes arguments were disingenuous,and that is why his followers love him so
much.